Trickle Downers

The Prospect's ongoing exposé of the folly, dysfunctions, and sheer idiocy of feed-the-rich economic policies.

Tax Cuts for the rich. Deregulation for the powerful. Wage suppression for everyone else. These are the tenets of trickle-down economics, the conservatives’ age-old strategy for advantaging the interests of the rich and powerful over those of the middle class and poor. The articles in Trickle-Downers are devoted, first, to exposing and refuting these lies, but equally, to reminding Americans that these claims aren’t made because they are true. Rather, they are made because they are the most effective way elites have found to bully, confuse and intimidate middle- and working-class voters. Trickle-down claims are not real economics. They are negotiating strategies. Here at the Prospect, we hope to help you win that negotiation.

The biennial Gallup poll on Americans’ sentiments toward capitalism and socialism came out this week, and the numbers tell us a lot, particularly about today’s Democrats. As in the 2016 poll, the share of Democrats who have a favorable view of socialism remains both high and essentially unchanged: 58 percent two years ago, 57 percent today.

In this year’s poll, however, for the first time the share of Democrats who view socialism favorably has taken a non-trivial lead over the share who feel the same way about capitalism. Two years ago, 56 percent of Democrats had a positive view of capitalism, essentially tying it with socialism (however much that meant that some Democrats had a positive view of both, and, for all we know, a positive view of a whole lot of things). This year, by contrast, the share of Democrats viewing capitalism positively tumbled to 47 percent—a full ten points beneath the share looking kindly on socialism.

It’s easy to read too much into these numbers (after all, yesterday’s poll showed that 16 percent of Republicans had a positive view of socialism, though this finding, like much of quantum mechanics, runs counter to reality as humans have experienced it). When many Democrats hear the word “socialism,” they think of such popular social democratic programs as Social Security and Medicare, or the single-payer systems and free public universities that exist in Western Europe. When many Republicans hear the word “socialism,” they think of Joseph Stalin.

That said, it’s not hard to see why even minimally sentient beings would be increasingly wary about capitalism, most certainly as it’s currently practiced in the United States. Just yesterday, as Gallup was releasing its data, the Financial Times produced its own analysis of profits, profit margins, and wages in the United States. With 90 percent of the companies in the S&P 500 now having filed their second-quarter reports, profits have risen by 25 percent over the same period last year, and profit margins—how much companies profit from their gross revenues—have hit 11.8 percent, which the FT says is “the highest level since financial information provider FactSet began recording the data in 2008.”

How very nice. Of course, as corporations rake in more profit from their sales, the share of those sales going to wages likely declines—and indeed, that’s exactly what’s happened. That partly explains why real wages have actually gone down over the past year when the rate of inflation (which by historic standards is still pretty low) is taken into account.

So—record-high profit margins, with record amounts then being shoveled to major shareholders through all-time-high share buybacks, while wages stubbornly sag despite low unemployment levels. Americans—Democratic Americans in particular—likely aren’t able to quote you the numbers, but they certainly sense that big money is being generated, and most Americans aren’t getting it.

No wonder Democrats are more and more dubious about capitalism. They should be.

Tax Cuts for the rich. Deregulation for the powerful. Wage suppression for everyone else. These are the tenets of trickle-down economics, the conservatives’ age-old strategy for advantaging the interests of the rich and powerful over those of the middle class and poor. The articles in Trickle-Downers are devoted, first, to exposing and refuting these lies, but equally, to reminding Americans that these claims aren’t made because they are true. Rather, they are made because they are the most effective way elites have found to bully, confuse and intimidate middle- and working-class voters. Trickle-down claims are not real economics. They are negotiating strategies. Here at the Prospect, we hope to help you win that negotiation.

trickle-downers.jpg When Trump’s not blaming foreigners for everything that ails America, he’s blaming regulations. Last week, he even blamed regulations for the wildfires now ravaging California. They’re “made so much worse,” he tweeted , “by the bad environmental laws which aren’t allowing massive amount[s] of readily available water to be properly utilized.” I have news for Trump. California’s tough environmental laws are among America’s (and the world’s) last bulwarks against climate change. And it’s climate change—not regulation—that’s wreaking havoc across California as well as much of the rest of the world. Oh, and Californians are using water very carefully. Yet Trump is pushing in the opposite direction. He’s now proposing to let cars pollute more and to strip California of its right to set higher air-quality rules . It’s not just the environment. Trump is also gutting...

trickle-downers.jpg Missouri unions will have little time to catch their breath after their decisive victory at the ballot box on Tuesday. By a 2-to-1 margin, voters in the Show Me State rejected a “right to work” law that would have allowed both public- and private-sector workers in unionized workplaces to opt out of paying dues to the unions that would still be required to bargain contracts for them and represent them in disputes with management. Similar “right to work” legislation has led to significant drops in union revenues and rolls in states like Wisconsin, Michigan, and Indiana. Missouri Republicans had for decades pushed for the law, and finally got their chance after the 2016 election of former Governor Eric Greitens, who was forced to resign in June amid a months-long scandal and felony charges. The ballot initiative would have made Missouri the country’s 28th “right to work” state. Tuesday’s vote forced conservatives back to...

I know you know that Republicans throw money at the rich. Doctrines may shift, Russia may go from bad guy to BFF, NATO may defend the free world one day and dilute our sovereignty the next, but tax cuts for the rich are the one True North of Republican cosmology. Without it, the party perishes, not only from diminished campaign contributions but from lack of raison d’être.

As to just how much money Republicans throw at the rich, the nonpartisan Institute on Taxation and Economy Policy (ITEP) released a report last month that’s gone largely unremarked in the media but that makes starkly clear just how faithful a friend and lapdog the GOP has been to our wealthiest friends and neighbors. What ITEP did was to total up all the tax reductions to the rich enacted since George W. Bush became president in 2001, subtracting from that total the restoration of higher tax rates on the rich that went through under President Barack Obama.

Here are the numbers: Since 2001, the income tax cuts for the wealthiest 1 percent come to $1,366 billion. The estate tax cuts for the wealthiest 1 percent come to $838 billion. Subtract from these cuts the hikes on the wealthiest 1 percent enacted during the Obama intermission, and we have a grand total of $1,924 billion that the wealthiest have been able to pocket for their rainy day funds.

I think that’s close enough that we can round it up a bit to an even $2,000 billion—which, for those of you who’ve been counting the zeros, is actually $2 trillion.

And that doesn’t count, of course, the additional $100 billion in cuts to capital gains taxes that the administration now says it plans to implement administratively by changing how it calculates the initial value of investments. That $100 billion, too, would flow chiefly to that same 1 percent.

But back to that $2 trillion: By a curious coincidence, that was also the amount that the administration proposed to save in its (mercifully, not very enactable) 2019 budget by reducing spending on Medicaid ($1.4 trillion), Medicare ($530 billion) and Social Security ($25 billion)—which comes in at a cool $1.955 trillion. As with the tax cut to the 1 percent, let’s just round that to $2 trillion, too.

So: Republican presidents and congresses have cut the taxes of the 1 percent by $2 trillion over the past 17 years, and Trump has now proposed to cut spending on Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security by the same $2 trillion.

Democratic campaign consultants, do with this what you will.

Tax Cuts for the rich. Deregulation for the powerful. Wage suppression for everyone else. These are the tenets of trickle-down economics, the conservatives’ age-old strategy for advantaging the interests of the rich and powerful over those of the middle class and poor. The articles in Trickle-Downers are devoted, first, to exposing and refuting these lies, but equally, to reminding Americans that these claims aren’t made because they are true. Rather, they are made because they are the most effective way elites have found to bully, confuse and intimidate middle- and working-class voters. Trickle-down claims are not real economics. They are negotiating strategies. Here at the Prospect, we hope to help you win that negotiation.

trickle-downers.jpg On any given day, you’re likely to interact with a lot of people who work in the low-wage labor market. They’re the laborers you pass on the street, the retail clerks in a shop you frequent, the cooks or wait staff at a restaurant you like. They might be your family, friends, and coworkers. Maybe you yourself work in one of these occupations—after all, many millions of Americans do. While conservatives might paint adults who receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, commonly called food stamps) benefits and Medicaid as idle people who don’t want to work, the data don’t validate that assumption. Adults who rely on SNAP and Medicaid for help paying for their groceries and health care are often those same low-wage workers. But their work is largely volatile and unstable, and it comes without such key work supports as paid sick and family leave and affordable child care. That’s why the recent policy push to institute...